Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/408

 392 CRITICAL STUDIES assures us : " In wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato ; in humour he surpasses the Fal- staff of Shakespeare. Clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr. Johnson in close and peremptory argument ; fertile and copious, he might have rivalled Burke in amplitude of declamation." Mr. Skelton, although, as we have seen, he, too, has been mightily influenced by the same personal ascen- dency, writes far more judicially of the writer : "John Wilson was an immense man, physically and mentally, and yet his nature was essentially incomplete. He needed concentration. Had the tree been thoroughly pruned, the fruit would have been larger and richer. As it was, he seldom contrived to sustain the inspira- tion unimpaired for any time ; it ran away into shallows, and spread fruitlessly over the land. In many respects one of the truest, soundest, honestest men who ever lived, he used to grow merely declama- tory at times. Amazingly humorous as the Shepherd of the 'Noctes' is (there are scenes, such as the opening of the haggis, the swimming match with Tickler while the London packet comes up the Forth, which manifest the humour of conception as well as the humour of character in a measure that has seldom been surpassed by the greatest masters), his fun is often awkward, and his enthusiasm is apt to tire. . . . And if the Shepherd at his best could be taken out of the 'Noctes' and compressed into a compact duodecimo volume, we should have an original piece of imaginative humour, which might fitly stand for all time by the side of the portly Knight [Falstaff.]" In his "Comedy of the Noctes," Mr. Skelton has attempted the compression thus indicated,